FDA reaches a desperate new low in the fight against diabesity

I’m just going to come right out and say this — I think the FDA needs to be eliminated.

I don’t want my tax dollars going to an organization that openly sanctions the use of grotesque (and often, completely unnecessary) measures for weight loss.

Like, for example, their recent approval of a controversial new procedure. In a nutshell, your doctor implants a tube into your stomach that you can use to empty out the food you’ve eaten before your body can absorb all the calories.

Yes, such a thing really exists. It’s called the AspireAssist. And its approval left me utterly speechless (save a few choice words I’d rather not repeat here).

It’s been marketed as a more affordable, less invasive alternative to bariatric surgery. But a lot of doctors (myself included) are calling it out for what it really is: “medically sanctioned bulimia.” And a desperate new low in the fight against the diabesity epidemic raging in this country.

Two thirds of all American adults are overweight now, and a third are obese. Nearly 30 million have diagnosed diabetes, and 86 million prediabetics are creeping dangerously close. Even without expensive and outlandish medical procedures, a diabetic patient can easily wind up taking four or five different medications to control their blood sugar, amounting to thousands of dollars every year.

Yet obviously, none of the solutions we’ve been relying on so far have made a dent. Why? Because the medical industry couldn’t care less. They are making billions (probably hundreds of billions) of dollars keeping this country sick.

And you wonder why common sense measures still can’t get traction.

How about having thinner people pay lower health insurance premiums? Or taxing sugar so high that it discourages people from eating it? Or just offering truthful and accurate information about what people should and shouldn’t eat?

I could go on and on with actionable suggestions, taken straight out of the anti-tobacco playbook.

And yet still, we continue to treat extreme and invasive tactics like surgery as if they were somehow sensible solutions to this problem.

Case in point: Just recently, 45 different medical societies around the globe — including the American Diabetes Association (ADA) — proposed making bariatric surgery a standard treatment for diabetes. I doubt I need to remind you, but I will: These surgeries include variations like stomach stapling and gastric bypass, and come with price tags as high as $25,000.

And that’s just for the surgery. It doesn’t include post-operative follow ups and the potential for complications — which occur in some 17 percent of patients, and include serious issues like nutrient deficiencies, infection, and intestinal blockage.

At this rate, why not just wire patients’ jaws shut? It’s far cheaper and would accomplish the same thing!

The fact that we’re even having this discussion is pure nonsense. Especially when there are both safe and cheap methods that work far better. Have these “scientists” never heard of low carbohydrate diets?

I have been witnessing the benefits of low-carb diets for over two decades — and have been writing about them and talking about them on the radio and television for just as long. I have personally cared for hundreds of patients who, after cutting down on carbs, were able to both lose weight and get off their diabetes medications.

The same medications that other doctors had insisted they would be on for the rest of their lives.

But you don’t need to take my word for it. More than 40 different clinical trials show that these diets work. So it’s just plain crazy to suggest that diabetes is some irreversible condition that requires surgery. In fact, studies show that simply restricting carbs can improve glucose levels and insulin sensitivity by 75 percentwithin weeks.

Furthermore, if you replace these foods with protein and fat, you have the added bonus of curbing hunger — which means diabetics can lose weight without starving themselves, or even counting calories.

It’s worth mentioning that low-carb diets used to be the standard treatment for diabetics. That changed when pharmaceutical insulin became available. And by the late 70s — a period I refer to as the “dark ages” — we got the infamous high-carb, low-fat guidelines courtesy of the USDA and the ADA. Dietary advice that has continued to plague the mainstream medical community, despite repeated debunking over the last 15 years.

To this day, the ADA won’t cop to the mistake, stating that there’s “no conclusive evidence” to recommend carbohydrate restriction. They even go so far as to recommend carbohydrates to prevent hypoglycemia. (An admittedly dangerous condition which is far better avoided by — you guessed it — eliminating carbs, and thus the need for excess insulin, in the first place.)

Telling diabetics to eat a high-carb diet sentences them to a life of pharmaceutical dependence. It’s as simple as that. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, famously said to “first do no harm.” Perhaps he should have said “first, do low carb” instead.

For step-by-step guidance on how to prevent — or even reverse — diabetes without dangerous surgery, check out my complete Metabolic Repair Protocol. It includes the same detailed advice I give my own patients…but you don’t have to travel to my office here in New York to get it. In fact, you can access it right from the comfort of your own home. Click here to learn more about it or to enroll today.